“Thank you Jane dear,” Gardiner smiled. “Some months ago, I purchased the house next door to us, the one which shares a wall with this house. I had intended to create space for offices there, but your Aunt Maddie and I have spoken. With our three and you four who will remain with us for the foreseeable future once Lizzy is married tothat man, we will open the walls between the two houses and make one big dwelling. There will be more than enough bedchambers for each of you to have yourown and when Lilly, Eddy, and then May move from the nursery, they will have their own rooms as well.”
“Is there nothing which can be done with regards to my marriage?” Elizabeth asked.
“If I had known of this before your father,” Gardiner noted his niece’s scowl when he referred to Bennet in that way. “Excuse me, beforeMr. Bennetsigned the settlements, there may have been a way, but now there is not. If you refuse to marry him, he will assume guardianship of all five of you. He has enough wealth that he would be able to beat back any challenge.”
Elizabeth felt like she had to ask. She was well aware of the terms of the settlement and that she had sacrificed herself to protect Jane. If she could have been assured Jane would be safe, she would have run away already. She would never do that to her most beloved sister.
“But why must I stay with you?” Lydia whinged.
“Lyddie, did you not hear what was said in the drawing room at Longbourn yesterday?” Madeline who had been silent up to now enquired.
“Yes, but Mama tried to say it was not true,” Lydia claimed.
“Mrs. Bennet was prevaricating,” Elizabeth stated stridently. “Do you think a parent who is willing to sell one of her daughters for her own future comfort truly loves any of her children?”
“But Mama never liked you; she would not have done so to the rest of us,” Lydia reasoned, with much less confidence than she had before.
“Did you not hear Aunt Maddie remonstrate with Mama because she had wanted me to be the one to marry that ancient man…I am sorry, Lizzy,” Jane rebutted.
“Please Jane, you, and any others, may insult that man as much as you choose. It is after all nothing but the truth,” Elizabeth allowed.
“W-was t-that t-t-true?” Lydia queried tremulously. “I-I thought M-Mama loved you well, like m-me.”
“It was all true Lyddie…” Jane told her sister exactly how their mother had tried to push her forward as the one to be sacrificed. “She only became sanguine with Lizzy being the one to be offered to the man when he offered to end the entail and dower the rest of us.”
The tears fell freely from Lydia’s eyes. It was not easy to see the pain it caused her to have her illusions shattered regarding Mrs. Bennet being a loving mother—at least to some of her daughters.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
Robert Darcy had been in London for two days when he saw the announcement in theTimes of Londonthat the dissipated duke was taking another bride. That her name—Miss Elizabeth Bennet of Longbourn in Hertfordshire—was unknown was no surprise.
Rumour had been circulating according to his brother Reggie Fitzwilliam that Hertfordshire had turned to look in the countryside for his next bride when he had come to realise all doors in polite society were closed to him. No one he knew of would allow their daughter to become the Duke’s next victim regardless of his rank or wealth.
The announcement said nothing of the young lady’s family. Darcy wondered how old she was knowing the Duke was past five and sixty years.
He made his way to the main drawing room where his wife was entertaining their sister, Lady Elaine Fitzwilliam, LadySarah, the Countess of Jersey, and Lady Rose, Duchess of Bedford.
Darcy bowed to the ladies. “Anne and ladies, I just saw a distressing announcement in the papers, Hertfordshire is to be married again,” Darcy shared.
“Do we know the lady?” Lady Anne enquired.
“No Anne, she is a Miss Elizabeth Bennet from an estate in Hertfordshire.” Darcy turned towards the Duchess of Bedford. “Lady Rose, as your main estate is in Bedfordshire, have you heard of this family?”
“No, it is not a name known to me. Mayhap Sedgewick knows of them, but I doubt it,” Lady Rose averred.
“It is obviously a family who only saw his rank and either did not know of his reputation or cared more for the societal advantages of such a match,” Lady Jersey opined.
“We can only pray this lady has the strength to survive where his previous wives did not,” Lady Anne stated sadly. “If her family did not know what he is, then they were wilfully blind.”
“Or they cared not enough for their daughter and were seduced by his rank and wealth,” Lady Matlock surmised.
There were sad nods from those in the room. It was a fact of life that there were parents who would sacrifice one of their offspring for purely selfish motives.
“Such a pity the King did not act when my husband and others tried to have the disgusting man hobbled,” Lady Rose sighed.
A few years back, the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Jersey, among other peers had applied to the King to have Hertfordshire’s rank and wealth stripped from him. The King had been disinterested—part of his malady in the peers’ opinions—and nothing had come of it except an angry and vengeful Duke of Hertfordshire once word got back to him.
Given the group who had applied to the King were made up of dukes and a few earls, there was nothing—so far—other than bluster Hertfordshire had been able to do.
